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These posts come from visits to reservations and urban-Indian communities. Look for my book, "American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle for Self-Determination and Inclusion," coming In spring 2018.

From Paris to Pine Ridge: The Sioux Have a Climate Solution

In defiance of President Trump’s plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, cities, states and companies countrywide are joining global efforts to control climate change. The Sioux will be part of the solution as well, said Rosebud Sioux tribe member Dan Gargan. He sits on the board of Oceti Sakowin Power Authority (OSPA), a giant Sioux-owned wind farm that’s getting underway in the Northern Plains.

The blustery region been called the Saudi Arabia of wind power and is said to be able to fill the United States's entire energy needs several times over with emissions-free, sustainably produced electricity. “We tribes see ourselves as custodians of the environment,” Gargan said. “This project is something we have wanted for a long time.”

OSPA has been assisted by the Clinton Global Initiative, among other groups. Former President Bill Clinton has called it “one of my favorite commitments.” He has said that OSPA will contribute to U.S. energy independence with clean sustainable energy while building a better future for the tribes. He has called the project’s potential “staggering.”

The utility-scale project is the first of its kind in the U.S. in decades. It will sell energy to the national wholesale market at an auspicious moment. That’s because big companies’ market share of wind energy keeps expanding, according to Caroline Herron of Herron Consulting, which has worked with OSPA since its beginnings. “In 2015, corporations bought more than fifty percent of wind energy for the first time, which was more even than the utilities,” Herron said.

Gargan said OSPA will soon select a developer/operator partner for project completion and set a timeline for future stages, including constructing wind turbines on the tribes’ land. For more, go to Indian Country Media Network.

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This article appeared on In These Times' magazine's Rural America website in September 2015 and was updated in November.
This isn’t the “new” world for the Western Shoshone. And their West was never “wild.” It is a place of deep cultural connections to a homeland that at one time extended across portions of Idaho, Nevada, Utah and California. For more than 10,000 years, they have met to gather a type of white flint and to practice their ceremonies in what is today called the Tosawihi Quarries, or alternately the Tosawihi Complex, a stretch of northern Nevada.

“That stone is very sacred to us,” says Joe Holley, seen below in Tosawihi. He is a tribal council member and former chairman of the Battle Mountain Band of the Te-Moak Western Shoshone, one of several federally recognized tribes with links to the area. “We use it every day and have done so for millennia, for tools, ceremonies and healing. The stone, the water, the entire place is sacred.”
The word Tosawihi means White Kn…

This article first appeared on Indian Country Today Media Network in September 2016. Chairmen Bobby Sanchez and Vinton Hawley,
of the Walker River and Pyramid Lake Paiute tribes, respectively, are
plaintiffs in a major new voting-rights lawsuit, filed in federal court
in Nevada. They are joined by three military veterans from their communities:
Ralph Burns, Robert James and Johnny Williams, Jr. “We know that these veterans have already paid for the
equality we seek for all our people,” the two chairmen announced in a joint
public statement. The lawsuit follows the rejection of tribal requests to
Nevada’s chief elections official, Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske and two
counties for full access to national elections, including reservation satellite
offices for registration and early and Election Day voting. According to the
plaintiffs, Walker River
Paiute Tribe voters must currently travel 70-some miles round trip to register
and early vote in the Mineral County seat, while Pyramid L…

This story first appeared on Indian Country Today Media Network in May 2015. For an August 2015 update, go here.

A federal judge has shredded claim after claim by a South Dakota county that overlaps the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation but will not guarantee tribal members on-reservation voter registration and in-person absentee voting (sometimes dubbed “early voting”). In future, Jackson County wants all residents to continue traveling to the courthouse in the county seat, Kadoka, to access the full range of voting services. Tribal members, including Oglala Sioux Nation vice president and lead plaintiff Tom Poor Bear, sued. They say the county’s stance violates the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing equal rights. The county defendants came back with a motion that the suit, Poor Bear v. The County of Jackson,be dismissed. Judge Karen Schreier turned the county down, repeatedly opining that the plaintiffs had offered sufficient grounds to move the suit forward, whil…

I am a long-time writer on human rights and culture, with a focus on Native American issues. Recognition for my articles includes the Richard LaCourse Award for Investigative Reporting from the Native American Journalists Association, of which I am an associate (non-Native) member, and numerous other grants and awards from major journalism organizations. I am a contributing writer for publications covering politics and the arts. During two decades in magazines, I was an editor at national consumer magazines.